understanding what brilliant might mean

howdy pop pickers

yes, indeed, this is another post pertaining (or relating to) David Bowie, look you see. it is so that the Bowie Estate has worked out a way to extract yet more money from me. sure, in fairness, that is not all that difficult for them to do, just wave some music with his name on it at me. but not, as they are trying, a water bottle with his name on, which they want £50 for. fifty, that is not a typo.

i had really rather assumed that the year was done with Bowie releases, to be honest. so far we have had, after all, Is It Any Wonder? and ChangesNowBowie, as well as (yet) another live thing from the 1974 tour that was a record store day release. further, soon (hopefully before this is published), the 50th anniversary release thingie for The Man Who Sold The World (renamed Metrobolist or something, certainly begins with an M) is out / due. yes, this is overlooking the Absolute Beginners soundtrack, too, which i felt obliged to pick up. 

quite the surprise, then, when the Bowie Estate (via the official site) announced that they were releasing a series of, get this, six (6) live albums, entitled the Brilliant Live Adventures series, covering concerts from 1995 to 1999. starting with one from 1995. 

that is indeed a most excellent cover for this first of the "brilliant" live "adventures", made even more better thanks to the greater glory of Commodore 64 mode. it is a really, really good thing that this album, Ouvrez Le Chien (which James tells me means something along the lines of out the dog, and his French is a lot better than mine), has such a splendid cover, for that is just about the best thing going for it. a Bowie fan i am, yes, devout so, but that does not mean i am going to praise any tosh. buy it, sure. 

want to address some of the controversies around this release, and the whole concept, first? sure. it is most decidedly so that we, the fans, have come well and truly used to needless attempts at being completely f****d over by the Bowie Estate, simply for being fans and, you know, wishing to buy music. generally i overlook these as (mostly) i have been able to get the releases i wish for. many have not. in this instance, they really did a number on collectors who are more avid and devout than me. 

for some inexplicable reason they decided to sell - separately - a cardboard box in which one can house all the cds or lps as and when they have been lucky or fortunate enough to buy them all. these boxes, selling somewhere north of £15 (for an empty cardboard box), were "strictly limited" in availability but not, alas, limited in how many one person could buy. oh yes, indeed, the more entrepreneurial types bought as many as they could, and the last i saw they (empty cardboard boxes) are exchanging hands on the great car boot of the internet for north of £200 (two hundred). 

also, once again it is that the Bowie Estate have elected to make these CD (and vinyl) releases a strictly limited edition number. this first volume is already sold out on the UK / EU store (so far as i am aware one could only purchase there), but is available on the USA store. so, they underestimate the demand for Bowie recordings in the UK (and Europe) but overestimate the demand in the States. oh, if only they had, say, some 50 or so years of sales data to work out who may want what. 

right, with those complaints and grievances aside (for now), time to get on to the problems and issues with this album, along with where relevant (not too often) highlight good aspects of it. for context, then, this was recorded on Bowie's first solo tour for some five years, specifically a gig in Texas in October 1995. which was 25 years ago, blimey. 

one important thing to note was that the solo tour prior to this, the Sound+Vision "greatest hits" thing, was yes, mostly, a lucrative way of topping up the bank account, but artistically Bowie "freeing" himself from any obligation to play "the hits" ever again. he made it abundantly clear that on any future sets after the greatest hits tour was done, the songs would be his choice. that might involve some well known bit hits or, as is predominantly the case with this gig, it might well not. 

nice picture on the back, too, but yes i prefer the cover one. anyway, it is a bit harsh to say this is a set bereft of hits or well known songs. for a start, there is the small matter of a massive number one single there, being as it is in the form of Under Pressure. also, The Heart's Filthy Lesson was a reasonable hit, and if i remember right Breaking Glass got a single release (and film named after it) too. oh, yes, i know that there is a song on that setlist which has or had indeed become extremely well known, but we shall get to that. or, i will, you will if you stick with reading this. obviously.

bearing in mind that the tour was in support of the 1.Outside (to use most of the full title) album, this is a set dominated by songs from it. not necessarily the best songs from that convoluted, overtly too long concept album, but some of them are. six songs on the disc are, to be precise. if vast swathes of the full record were pretty much incoherent and (possibly deliberately) inaccessible, then it makes somewhat less sense to have sporadically plucked some of the songs from it and play them in isolation, not to mention out of sequence. should that be possible with a "non-linear hyper diary" or whatever he called it. 

still, out there somewhere is someone who really, really likes 1.Outside, possibly rating it as the only Bowie record which counts. bonus if they managed to get a copy of this, and all the better if their most favourite songs are the ones plucked to be performed. the slightly less good news for such a person is the overall sound quality here. which is not very good. not quite bootleg levels as such, but very much heading in that area. 

with no musical ability or talent whatsoever, i am unfamiliar with the right phrasing or terminology to describe this. but, i would like to think, i know what i hear. huge chunks of this sound of the calibre and quality of a badly designed, ill advised FM broadcast. much of the album has assumed, or taken as a given, that what anyone wishing to buy this recording was interested in the most was the drumming. it is mixed, or placed, right at the forefront, with all else sounding muffled. across huge chunks of the album it is so that whenever is Bowie is singing - and let me suggest that this is predominantly what people who bought this record would wish to hear - someone went "oh, f***, David is using the microphone, quick, throw a blanket over the recording equipment". i am sure they had good reason to do this, yet i cannot comprehend what that might have been. 

interestingly, or perhaps suspiciously, the one vocal not to be blighted in this way at all is the final track, a superb performance of Teenage Wildlife. also, on that one, the recording equipment is blissfully moved away from just the drums. on the sleeve it says this was produced by David Bowie. either he prepared it for release and thought better of it, or had every intention of it sounding exactly like it does and wanted anyone listening to have the abiding memory being of how excellent Teenage Wildlife is. 

a surprising and yet not at all surprising inclusion in the set is, of course, The Man Who Sold The World. this was a song Bowie was known never ever to be happy with his recordings of, yet he knew it was strong material. at one stage it was even hurled at Lulu to try and make it the song it seemed to be to him. ultimately, of course, it got widespread attention, fame and adoration via Nirvana's MTV Unplugged take on the song. which turned out, or has come to be seen, as Kurt Cobain's swansong moment. 

most of us, i would think, took Bowie's decision to all of a sudden start performing the song as some sort of part acknowledgement, part tribute, part, oh yeah i had forgotten about that one thing. now, i am not certain. listening to it here again, it seems Bowie quite deliberately (maybe his subversion fetish) removed the distinct guitar solo bits, making it quite different from the Nirvana revival. also, it has come to light that Bowie told Dave Grohl, the drummer out of Nirvana and the self-styled "nicest guy in rock", to f*** off. perhaps it was rather more "that is my song, thank you, i am taking it back". 

to my ears, in looking at another track, the version of Under Pressure here is "different" to the one which appeared on the Hallo Spaceboy single. although that is listed as also being recorded in 1995. yes, the one on the single is much much better quality. so either there is a better quality recording of this gig which (at least once) existed, or a better concert recording lurks. 

going on the title of these, i am not really certain that this album is "brilliant". for qualification, i have played it through some 8 or 10 times, possibly just to extract some value. whether it is an adventure or not, i suppose, is down to the listener. should you be a fan who failed to secure a physical copy, well sorry, i know what a gap in a collection feels like. but this is neither dazzling nor essential.

just where next for these Brilliant Live Adventures? there is a limited pool for the next five. on the plus side, from what i recall as the 1.Outside tour progressed into 1996, the song selection was less that album, more some real gems of a set list. but on the negative, or down, there shall no doubt be at least one release related to the Earthling tour. perhaps the celebrated London Astoria 1999 gig, arranged purely to record and release, will finally get an official issue, then. it is possible some sort of "remastered" or "expanded" version of Vh1 Storytellers could be included, but they have only recently issued the as-is version on vinyl. we shall find out, i guess. 

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!